Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I am here to speak about disaster aid and the acute need we have in my State for assistance to deal with a disaster that occurred earlier this summer in Minot, ND. These are pictures from the valley in Minot, ND. Minot is constructed on two hills, with a valley in between, with the Souris River flowing through. We have just had the worst flood ever in history, by a long margin. The Corps of Engineers was in yesterday to see me. They calculate that this was a 430-year flood. A flood of this magnitude would only come every 430 years. Certainly, it is beyond anything we have ever seen in recorded history. They say the volume in this flood was three times the previous record; the volume of water was three times the previous record. These are just a handful of the homes in Minot that were inundated; and 4,000 families lost their homes. These are modest, middle-class families, and the homes averaged $160,000 or $170,000 in value. Yet they are devastated, because all they are eligible for is FEMA assistance. As the occupant of the chair knows well, FEMA was never designed to be a stand-alone program to recover from disaster. FEMA was designed to work in concert with insurance programs--homeowner's insurance, flood insurance. In this case, with a flood, homeowner's insurance doesn't help you at all. You get nothing on your homeowner's insurance. Then the burden falls to flood insurance.…”